Making a living from writing is extraordinarily difficult — ask me how I know this — and I have often been tempted to put much if not all of my non-novel writing behind a paywall (SubStack, etc.). There are two problems with this action: the first is that my blogging has never been a serious attempt to make money, which is why I have to resort to the occasional ad hoc beg-a-thon for crises, and Patreon for “subscription” support. (And to those of you who participate in the latter, thank you again: you have no idea how much it helps.)
The second reason I don’t charge for access is that to be perfectly frank, I don’t think my blogging is that valuable in the grand scheme of things, and charging for access would be somewhat… impertinent on my part. Put baldly, anyone with a little spare time can find pics of beautiful women, cars, guns and so on for themselves. As for my commentary: well, I know that many people — in the beginning, anyway — told me that my blog made them realize that they weren’t the only ones who felt this way, especially whether it came to political outlook and social perspective. Of gun love, we will not speak. But is it all that valuable?
And that’s all I care to say about that.
What I really want to talk about is how the various online media are starting to charge readers, most often not for their entire opus, but for certain articles only. Here are a few examples:
- The Daily Mail:
- The Sun:
and we all know about - PJMedia:
This, as opposed to other outlets who have pretty much set upon putting their entire publication behind a paywall, like The New York Times (lol never gonna happen), The Epoch Times, Britain’s Daily Telegraph and so on. In several cases, I would really like to read their stuff but I can’t afford the subscription — not individually, but cumulatively, all those subscriptions would add up to a considerable amount which I cannot possibly afford. (Ditto TV/Internet streaming services, but that’s a story for another time.)
Look, I don’t have a problem with any of this. It costs a great deal to run a media company — although I would argue much less than when they were reliant on newsprint for their distribution — but even with the economies of Internet publication, they still have to pay for content (writers, photographers) and production (editorial/site maintenance staff etc.) as well as hosting bandwidth, which means that they have to charge for access. TANSTAAFL, and this is as true for them as for any other business which offers a product to consumers.
We consumers have been spoiled in this regard, because when the Internet started, so much of the content came free and we became spoiled thereby. So now when we get confronted by a paywall, we get all huffy and say, “It ain’t worth it!” and in many cases it isn’t.
I know that many people find my reading of the often-dreadful Daily Mail inexplicable, but let me nevertheless use them as an example for how I treat the mini-paywalls. Here’s an example of yesterday’s Mail headlines:
I find this interesting. If the Mail thinks that Gold-Digger story is enticing enough to make me want to join their little subscription club, they are sadly mistaken. (Given the profile of their average reader, however, they may not be altogether wrong.) And the prurient reader will find several examples of the Pineapple Sack type, all for free.
The only one of the four example articles which interests me at all is the one about pay-per-mile driving charges, not because it would affect me or most of my Readers, it being a UK phenomenon; but because if the stupid Green Nude Heel program were to be implemented Over Here by various Green politicians of the Biden/Harris/Obama stripe, it would very much be relevant. And as I so often say: stuff that happens Over There will often make its way Over Here at some point, so we need to be vigilant.
Anyway, while there may occasionally be a paywalled article in any of the places I frequent for my daily news, generally speaking the PPV aspect is mostly an irritant — and as I’ve illustrated above, often not even that because the topic, details and/or commentary thereon is of little interest to me.
What I’m discovering is that there are a few writers / commentators whose stuff I might be tempted into paying for on a subscription basis — Victor Davis Hanson and Jordan Peterson come to mind — but honestly, they are few and far between.
And Megyn Kelly would have to broadcast her show in the nude to get my subscription dollar, and maybe not even then.
I am not at all averse to media putting adverts and commercials in their product to generate revenue, similar to what newspapers and broadcast TV stations have always done — provided that said ads are not too large, too many, too obtrusive or too repetitive. And the internet print outlets have only themselves to blame for the arrival of services like AdBlock, when the ads suddenly started shouting at me or auto-loading some fucking mini-movie which interrupted my reading. I know the rationale for such commercials — I worked in the advertising business for years — but I reject it utterly. There is a reason why TV channels could only run a few minutes’ worth of commercials per hour back in the day, and that’s because when the commercials became all-pervasive and a considerable irritant, then government had to step in and we all know what happens in such cases.
Anyway, what we’re dealing with now is a media environment which is constantly changing, much as the broadcast media changed with the arrival of cable. All I can say is that everyone, from the DailyMail to PJMedia to Insty to humble bloggers like me, needs to be aware of their limitations.
I think I know mine, but I’m not so sure about the big guys.
i’m assuming you’ve realised, for the Maily Dail at least, you can just put the url into archive.is, and see all the wonderful prose behind the paywall.
Also works for the Telegraph. And the Times. No idea about the Sun!
12ft.io frequently works when archive.is doesn’t have a copy of something.
The news delivered via websites and videos and articles on said websites are trying to find revenue streams. Less viewers means ad revenue is likely down. So they need to charge for their content.
Still lots of free news. Local news. Independent journalists on YouTube.
Interesting when the Lie Witless news says one thing and then Independant journalists on YouTube show up and the video is something different than what the legacy media lie witless news said was happening. Example how Ukraine was in such trouble and turmoil yet a chunk of Ukraine is living well off of US tax dollars and some Ukrainians are partying and living it up on the American handouts.
There is some content that I’d like to read but the subscriptions do indeed add up. Unfortunately the local library is unlikely to subscribe to what I want to read. I think the Daily Wire had some sort of “sale” but even their sale price is too much for me. I figure some of the paywall articles might become free after a couple of days or a week.
We cut cable years ago and went to streaming services. At first we saved quite a bit by not paying for cable. The rates on most of the streaming services have gone up. we’ll subscribe to a streaming channel for a while then cancel it if we don’t use it. I find that I will watch one of these channels quite a bit then not use it for a couple of months. I think that it’s time to cut back further on streaming channels.
I was a PJmedia subscriber. After a year, it didn’t seem to me that the content behind the paywall was worth the money. Add into that, there were parts that you had to be VIP gold. So shit on it.
For some time, Wall Street Journal had a decent price for the initial membership, but that included dropping off the dead tree version on my doorstep, when all I wanted was digital access. That said, there are a few substacks I like that I threw them some shekels. My problem with the legacy media ones is that they mostly suck, and they price it like the dead tree edition you’d pick up at the store. 50% off the newstand price! – Well if it’s a dollar to buy in the 7-11, fiddy cents per day on the web, that’s nearly $200 a year. Takes a lot to justify that, since I’d only ever read a handful of articles.
I have other web subscriptions that I got and forgot to turn off auto-renew. Got spanked this month with two of them. So now I need to go back over all of them and kill the accounts. Malware bytes was another one. I had a plan that covered all the computers in the house, but now it’s just me and I don’t use it on any of my machines.
Takes eternal vigilance to keep up with these things.
I just use the free malware bytes in my Mac. Never the paid one. Running a scan manually isn’t hard.
It’s like the companies count on people forgetting to turn off auto renew.
If people aren’t careful a few streaming services here and their can add up to as much or more than cable tv.
200 bucks a year is more ammo, gas for your generator, or something else useful other than lining the pockets of the liberal media and paying for the privilege of being mind raped by sleazebags.
I’m a paid subscriber to Glenn Reynolds’ substack. It’s my way of paying him back for InstaPundit.
You know what I would pay to see? Pay per view style
Get the following people in a room for a conversation – in fact fire all the twats on the talk show the view, not just Joy Behar. (Joy Behar always was and is a wretched liberal bitch but so are the rest of the twats on that train wreck of a show).
Start the New View as a pay per season series with the following hosts all at once:
– Joe Biden
– Ozzy Osbourne
– George W Bush
– Gary Busey
Make sure there is cocaine, alcohol and lots of random topics to discuss.
That would be entertainment people would pay top dollar to see instead of the fucking trash that’s on TV today.
(Just don’t host it on Netflix. The streaming over on their stutters more than a car with bad gas going uphill).
There was a time when I subscribed to “American Rifleman” until the first time I saw an add for Viagra. My NRA was the days of Neal Knox and Harlan Carter. My last dead tree subscription was to “Precision Shooting” until they went belly up.
During my Army hitch in West Germany, I had the good fortune to get to know a German family. It was a pleasant surprise to learn that German TV played movies without interruption. Commercials were all stacked together between shows in (IIRC) 20 minute blocks. Made for a handy intermission.
[I think this’s a safe place to share some of my personal information.]
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During my long career as a professional blogger, I charged a subscription fee.
I had one subscriber, my middle sister the truck driver.
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Although she deeply appreciated all the stupendous wisdom I imparted, her subscription termination letter included a biting yet, in hindsight, probably valid condemnation:
* “…pretentious tripe…”
And so ended my quest for blogging wealth and fame.
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Sticking with that successful formula, these days, I earn quite the comfortable living doing commentary on blog content.
To maintain a delicate balance — and keep my many loyal readers hungry and coming back for more — my ‘Comments About Comments Programme’ is usually gratis (that would be the foreign word for ‘free’).
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Moral Of The Story:
* I am always accepting applications from potential students for certain positions, so keep ‘swinging!’!
I subscribed to Epoch Times for a few months where I noticed their topics were covered on other blogs so I turned it off. I need to do that with with some of my TV streaming services.
Part of the problem for me with some of the news services, is that the damned ads don’t go away when you pay.